He turned the rearview mirror towards me, and I saw myself for the first time in days; my hair tangled like a Medusa’s, covered with red dust, scratches all over my arms and legs, car grease on my nose.
I felt so happy, as if I had been given a new life.
What was incredibly refreshing—and I remember noticing it right from the start during that first safari—was that Adam and I didn’t speak the same language, in any sense. By speaking in English to him I inevitably needed to force something out. Not only was I obliged to be simpler, less Machiavellian, but by speaking my second language I was leaving behind a whole chunk of my history which had to do with Ferdinando. I felt lighter, as if I had been allowed to unload a weight off my back.
We didn’t know anything about each other, we couldn’t possibly picture what each other’s life had been like up until then. I tried to imagine his childhood at his grandfather’s farm, running barefoot after the warthogs, learning how to use a gun at the age of eleven, being spat at in the eyes by a cobra.
He was the result of events and circumstances completely foreign to me.
I was as much of a riddle to him: Naples, Ferdinando and the Communist Party, going to school by cab because my father had never learnt how to drive, baroque architecture, Truffaut’s movies, swimming in the coolness of the Mediterranean in the spring. Instinctively we avoided our past histories, feeling that there would be too many gaps, which in a sense neither of us felt needed to be filled. We made love, slept, ate, and drove. We learned how to be close in a physical sense.
I rang Louise, Ferdinando’s third wife, collect from the post office in Nanyuki, on the way back to Nairobi. From the window, I could see Adam eating a somosa while checking the water in the radiator. I kept my eyes on him throughout the conversation, almost as if I needed to make that scene as real as possible while making the first contact with the other side.
The picture showed a handsome man I knew almost nothing about, on the edge of a Far West–like African town, across the road from the Settler’s Provisions Store. Nanyuki, Kenya, East Africa.
Louise sounded tired and distraught. She said that there had been an incredible amount of paperwork concerning Ferdinando’s will, and that I should come back to sign some of the papers. She kept saying “your father” as if now that he was dead and of no avail, I was the one to blame for the chaotic situation he had left behind.
“We don’t even know who has the rights for the American translations, you know your father never kept track of anything, it’s such a mess—”
“Did you speak to Lorenzi? He should know.”
“Lorenzi is a greedy bastard, like all of them. Goddam vultures…”
“Louise, it’ll be fine. Don’t panic, okay?”
“I just want to get out of here, sell the house and go as soon as possible. I hate this country.” She was on the verge of breaking down.
I didn’t like the way she was going back into her shell, suddenly so resentful towards the place where she’d lived for fifteen years.
“I’ve had it. Your father’s friends are all grandissimi stronzi.”
She sounded so bitter, as if without the aura of my father we had all turned back into some kind of barbarians she didn’t want anything to do with. She sounded like just another callous American, one who had pretended a liking for excess, for a carefree and bohemian lifestyle, only in order to hold on to a man. At that moment I realized she had probably despised our life all along.
“Are you selling the house? I thought you—”
“That was always the plan I discussed with your father.” She was defensive now. “He knew I wouldn’t live here alone for anything in the world.”
Her betrayal took me by surprise. On the other hand, I guess she didn’t have much choice. Was I going to miss Louise? Did I love her enough to give her a reason to stay? The answer was no.
Where I came from there was never enough love for anyone to stay anywhere. Nobody ever asked anyone else to change their plans in the name of something.
I guess I should say in the name of love.
“What does Teo think of all this?”
“Oh God, you know what your brother is like. He doesn’t really care one way or another.”
I kept my eyes on the dusty road, framed by the post office window.
“Where are you, anyway?” She sounded tired of our conversation.
“In Africa.”
“I know that. Where exactly?”
“Oh. Kenya. On the equator. I just crossed it in fact.”
“Am I paying for this call?”
“Yes, indeed you are.”
“When are you coming back? You must sign these papers and your brother of course is completely—”
“Louise…”
“Yes?”
“Please let’s not talk about the papers now.”
“Right. So is there something else?”
“.….”
“Are you okay?”
“.….”
“Esmé, this is costing me a fortune.”
I hung up on her.
Ten days later I went back.
The logistics of changing my life turned out to be surprisingly simple: I had nothing to go back to. I didn’t have a serious job, I shared a flat with a friend I didn’t like, and apart from my brother there was nobody I would miss.
I signed the papers. I got my share of the American rights, and Lorenzi, who had acted in perfectly good faith all along, said I would get my royalties every six months. He had been my father’s good friend and lawyer and wasn’t trying to cheat anyone.
“Don’t expect much,” he said with a sad smile. “Poetry never sells.”
But it turned out that Ferdinando had left very precise instructions concerning me and my brother in the will. Not only did we both have a share in the sale of the house in Tuscany, but we inherited some very good paintings.
On a rainy day I went out to lunch with my brother Teo in a trattoria we had been going to forever, where Ferdinando had always had some kind of special arrangement which basically meant he never paid his bills. The owner came out of the kitchen, kissed us, said he was going to miss Ferdinando a lot and that there was no way he would ever let us pay in the future. The place felt warm, it smelled of minestrone, wood panelling and damp coats, and because it reminded us of many other lunches we had had there we became very sentimental and drank lots of expensive red wine.
Teo is a younger version of the aging knight, with the added frailty and dreamy eyes of my mother. That morning he looked particularly Byronic, his dark curly hair wet from the rain, wearing a buttoned-up oversize shirt picked up at a flea market.
“When do you think you’ll be able to join the company again? Can you do the next season?” I asked him.
“God knows. Nobody knows. I still can’t bend my leg properly.” He looked around the room impatiently. “Maybe I never will.”
“Please don’t say that.”
He had hurt his knee badly and had had to stop dancing a few months back. I knew he suffered, dancing meant so much to him—he had always had such a silvery energy on stage, like a whirling acrobat, an Ariel in flight.
“And what are you going to do with the money?” I asked him.
It was such an unlikely question. We had never before had any amount of money worth talking about.
“I could buy the flat I live in,” said Teo with a shrug. “That would be the wise thing to do. Otherwise I could happily squander it travelling with you.”
“That wouldn’t take us very far. We’d be pretty good at squandering it.”
Teo giggled.
“I’d say we’d be excellent.”
“It’s the only money we’ll ever get,” I said. “I think we should use it to do something if not wise, at least crucial.”
“I agree. Maybe we should buy a bigger flat and share it. We could get seriously organized and attempt to have a grown-up life.”
“Right.”
I p
aused. I drank more wine.
A flat in Rome. A brand-new dishwasher. A good stereo. A telephone in the bathroom. Did I want that?
“Teo, I think I want to move to Africa.”
He put down his wineglass and stared at me, startled. Then he tried to smile.
“Oh. Well, that’s a crucial enough plan.”
I kept brushing bread crumbs off the table, without being able to look back at him. Yes, we too were breaking apart now. The observation point had been shut down for good and we both had to find another site from which to look at things down below. The time had come for each of us to do it on our own.
“I don’t know. This guy, Adam…he…wants me to go back and live with him.”
He had asked me. In the name of love. As simple as that.
It had happened after we had come back from our safari in the bush, back into some kind of reality—cars, phones, supermarkets, other people. I had started to panic. In only two and a half weeks my five hundred dollars had shrunk to seventy-five; Adam had to go back into his office, book new clients, fix more vehicles, chat on the radio, get a new camp going. Some kind of decision needed to be taken. I felt lost.
“I’m going to have to go soon, Adam. Next week, I think,” I had said to him one morning when we had just woken up in his little stone house covered in creepers in Langata.
He hadn’t answered. We were still lying in bed. He had kept his eyes fixed on the mosquito net, then had quietly taken my hand in his. That had made me feel like crying. I was surprised to see my tears drop onto the pillow. It was as if my body had decided to produce evidence for my feelings. But Adam didn’t see me cry, he kept looking up, as if I wasn’t there.
“Don’t go,” he said quietly.
“But—”
“Listen,” he interrupted me. “I just knew it must be you the minute I saw you. It was like ‘Oh, there you are at last.’”
He finally turned to look at me. His green eyes looked so serious, almost reproachful.
“One isn’t given that chance more than once or twice in life, you know.”
“I know.”
“Then let’s not blow it.”
I wiped my eyes.
“All right. I could go and come back, then.”
“That’s much better.”
“He said he loves me.”
Teo looked at me, surprised.
“Fantastic.”
“I don’t know. It’s a bit scary. I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Go. Get on the plane tomorrow. This place is dead.”
“I feel like I’m going on a secret mission I know nothing about. As if someone has left me instructions on a piece of paper and I just have to follow. It’s weird.”
“No, you don’t understand, that’s what’s so exciting about it: dye your hair raven black, put on shades and pick up the fake documents with your new identity. Most likely it will be a German name, Baader Meinhoff–like. They’ll meet you at the gate and show you what to do next. It’ll be an adventure.”
“I wish.”
There was a pause.
“Wow. Nairobi.” He rolled the word in his mouth, as if testing its sound.
“It’s a Masai name,” I said, feeling suddenly melancholic. “It means ‘cold.’ The cold place.”
“Oh. That’s nice.”
We fell silent.
“Will you come and see me?” I asked him.
“Yes. But you’re coming back at some stage, aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
Suddenly I was scared.
“Oh Teo, I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Of course you can, my love. Call me often.” He squeezed my hand hard across the table. “Call me collect. I’m quite rich now, you know.”
I had the idea that moving out of my life would be a titanic undertaking. Instead my entire history filled up barely nine boxes. I faxed the bank asking them to deposit a small amount of money for me every month in a Nairobi account. I sold one of the paintings. That took care of finances. I was ready to go back to Africa in less than six weeks.
It was the beginning of July. When the Egypt Air flight took off from Fiumicino I felt a wave of panic: I started to feel palpitations; my hands turned cold and sweaty. I tried to control my breathing and attempted to concentrate on the fact that if worst came to worst I could always head back on another flight immediately after landing in Egypt.
But by the time I was sitting in the transit area in Cairo, waiting for the Nairobi connection, the panic dissolved like smoke in the wind. I looked at the other passengers half asleep on the orange plastic chairs under the bright fluorescent light so typical of every third-world airport. American missionary priests, Nigerian dudes in baseball caps, heavily veiled Yemenite girls, Indian families with incredibly noisy children, German backpackers immersed in the Lonely Planet guide.
The transit area: I had reached that neutral zone inhabited only by dispossessed beings—in purgatory en route to final destination—and our common condition made me feel much calmer.
There seemed to be room for a lot of different people. I figured that, in the end, if there was room for the Yemenite girls, the missionaries, the Nigerian dudes and the screaming Asian children, I didn’t see any reason why there shouldn’t be room for someone like me.
CHAPTER FIVE
I sometimes think we’ve got into a rather bad way,
living off here among things and people not our own,
without responsibilities or attachments,
with nothing to hold us together or keep us up;
marrying foreigners, forming artificial tastes,
playing tricks with our natural mission.
HENRY JAMES
Let’s be honest about it.
This is a story about white people in Africa. I am not even going to pretend that it is anything else.
As I said, we don’t have any African friends here. Except for those rare occasions—you can count them on your fingers—when we have met this or that young Kenyan, usually from a good family who has studied in England, and each time we remembered them slightly more exciting than they actually were, and made the same mental note that “we must remember to invite him/her next time we have a dinner.”
It has nothing to do with preconceptions or prejudice, it’s just the way it is, and after a while there’s no use even talking about it.
When I moved back here to live with Adam I knew Africans were going to play a big part in my life. I hadn’t yet developed a behaviour of my own, but I didn’t particularly like any of the white-versus-African behaviour I saw around me. As a result, I overreacted: I was always on guard, too cautious, too kind, too careful never to upset anybody. I distributed astronomical tips to whoever did the smallest thing for me, and never dared protest when I was being taken advantage of. I seemed to be shooting for the award for Best White Girl of the Year.
Then I studied Adam, watched him deal with the Africans who worked for him. He wasn’t trying to win their hearts. Didn’t have to prove anything. That’s when I realized that I was the one who was having a problem.
I still wanted to make an effort, if only to have something to write home about. I persecuted our landlady in Langata, Wambui Wambera, a distinguished Kikuyu widow, until she capitulated and agreed to come for tea on a Sunday. She showed up with her sister and two of their children, both of them decked out in shiny polyester, nylon wigs full on, bright pink nail polish. They sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa, hands resting on their knees, while the children stared at me dully, the horrified look of hostages in their eyes. We politely discussed the weather, school fees, and a Schwarzenegger film they had rented the night before at the video shop. I gave up.
“Just goes to show you the degree of our alienation,” Hunter had snapped when, much later on, I described this little tea party with Wambui for him, hoping he would find it amusing. But he didn’t.
“We are not living in the real world here. You know what?
In the long run it’s suicidal to live like this.”
In the end, apart from Hunter, who has chosen the best role in the play—our bad conscience—we are content to get along with our staff, and we like to believe we have become indispensable to their lives. We take them to the hospital when they are sick, contribute to the expenses of funerals, births and weddings, we smoke a cigarette with them in the kitchen, laugh at occasional jokes, and that seems enough to satisfy us.
Our relation to the Africans is strictly ruled by money. Obviously we like to think that there is more to it, but at the end of the day, just like Baroness Blixen and her beloved cook Kamante—with the same idiotic benevolence—we are appeased by their gratitude and faithfulness. That’s why we keep on tearing off price tags from our extravagant shopping.
We have simply stopped seeing any contradiction in what we do.
So here we are, my enemy and I, walking into another strictly mzungu Nairobi party. This is the night of her official debut in the white baboon family. I better watch this closely.
Nena’s husband, Peter, comes to open the door. He is good-looking in that plain way most men are around here, ex-boys who have spent all their life breathing fresh air, have had their hair gently streaked by the sun, and have improved their body through a variety of physical strains.
Peter is some kind of ethologist/computer whiz, who follows very closely the growth of the elephant population in Tsavo, producing monthly data which then go onto the Internet and placate the growing anxieties of conservationists around the world.
Will the elephants be all right? That seems the only question about Africa’s future the West really cares to know the answer to.
Well, Peter is the man to ask. He is the Elephant Man of Kenya, he’s got the figures down and has written books which have won him international recognition. Women readers especially love him because of the jacket photograph where he looks particularly rugged. After all, here is a man only in his mid-thirties, with a beautiful wife and three children, sandy-haired and blue-eyed with a healthy tan, who has a cause.
As a result of this incredibly good image, any movie producer, journalist, writer, any sort of Western half-celebrity who comes to Kenya, rings up Peter and Nena, either in connection with the elephant books or because their house has been featured in World of Interiors, giving the definite impression that you need only see that house in order to return home and say you have been treated to True African Ambience.
Rules of the Wild Page 6
